


Commercial Worth

by LadyProto



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, Character Development, Dark, Dark fic, Drama, Dubious Morality, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everything Hurts, F/M, Flashbacks, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Impact Play, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, I’ll legit do anything for a comment, Light BDSM, Light Dom/sub, Loneliness, Main pairing is mild dubious consent, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mild S&M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Older Woman/Younger Man, One Night Stands, Oral Sex, Rape Recovery, Reconciliation Sex, Rough Sex, Sexual Abuse, Sexual Content, Tea, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Vaginal Sex, flashbacks to noncon, safe sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2020-12-09 12:34:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20994884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyProto/pseuds/LadyProto
Summary: Riku misses the joke. He becomes the punchline.(And along the way you’ll meet! Questionable mentor relationships, talking animals, moody teens that still shop at hot topic, tea parties! Condoms that appear out of nowhere, disassociating your way through meaningful conversations, and scenes that will probably ruin your childhood — if I’m not sued by Disney first.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ((This will eventually include graphic sex between Riku/Aqua and vague mentions of underage molestation ))

I know I have habits to break.

I feel it most clearly when that old thought trickles back into my mind, the first weeping cracks of a dam about to blow. I can’t give it a name. It’s not jealousy. It’s more than that. It’s a longing, an expectation, that despite being shapeless has the weight of a behemoth. I want, more than anything, to no longer be on the outside of an inside joke.

From his place in the center of the room, Sora says something about orders and boarders and tangerine Donalds. Whatever. It’s fucking dumb. But the others clearly find it funny, as their giggles ripple across the room. What ever fantastical world the saying originates from is never explained. And why would it need to be? We’re supposed to be on the same team. 

We’re supposed to know each other’s jokes.

I set my teeth. Those old habits, the old feelings, it’s a weight on my chest I don’t need. The last few days have been an uneasy blur. Like the last mile of a marathon, when runner's high and fatigue mix into some type of restless automation. This world dissolves around me. This reality —in Yen Sid’s tower, surrounded by friends and fairy-tale creatures-- is held together by a precarious mix of balance and friction. I have enough of the latter. I’m still searching for the former. If I make one wrong move, if I say too much, feel too much, cause too much trouble -- then this moment will fall away like a house of cards, and I’ll be back in that alley way, staring through the glass as the others move on without me. Alone. Abandoned. Forgotten.

Fuck. I don’t need this right now. I try to let the moment slip away, to look for something to be mindful of, something that can pin me down in this fragile reality. The sugar cookies that leave buttery crumbs on Kairi’s lips. The crease in the leather of Axel’s glove as he guards his new laugh. There’s dirt on my boots, with the look and smell of wet coffee grounds. Undoubtedly, it’s from where we had pulled Aqua from the Realm of Darkness. They look so ashamed to be next to the clean lines of the wooden floor. These small tangible things are valid right here, right now in my life. I know the causes. I know the effects.

So, this is it, I’ve confirmed it. I’m real. This is real. I take a deep breath.

And now I’ve pissed myself off. 

If this is real then why is no one fucking _ reacting _. The final battle -- it's coming soon, but no one else seems to see it. Instead, they play pretend, taking this moment of indefinable languor and molding it into some kind of ignorant peace. Is it battle-weary intuition or paranoia? Is there even a difference? We’re safe here, I think., Sso why am I so fucked up about it? 

I-I’m sorry I say “fuck” so much. It’s part of the reason why I wasn’t picked to be the hero. I don’t have what it takes to be the main character, even on my own story. And it _ is _ a story. Nothing about this situation seems real. The constant rebirth, the constant fight to keep my soul inside my own body. Hearts. Heartless. Nobodies. The others don’t get it., and while I hope they never have to understand, I just want them to _ ask _. They’ve forgotten me. Like a loose button at the bottom of a coat that’s not needed until the weather gets frigid. 

I feel the thoughts coming back again. If I look at my hands, they are smaller, weaker, a child’s shakey palm as he wields things he does not understand. 

_ Hands. Hers are thin, bony, somehow dainty and commanding at the same time. The darkness her long fingers command is intoxicating. Those hands make their way to my shoulders. They grip my arm. _

_ Then, her voice hits hot and raspy If I think on it long enough. I feel the humidity of her breath on the shell of my ear. “They don’t care.” She whispers. “They’ve never cared.” _

_ There’s no argument I can make. Whatever noun I place in that sentence — Sora, Kairi, Mom, Dad — they’ve all left me. In one way or another, the fact remains. The witch is right. I am alone. No one cares. _

_ Who do I have to trust? _  
  


I shake it off, physically tossing my head as if from a nightmare. No one notices. They’re all focused on Kairi and her sweet sinless sensational smile. All the better really. They don’t want me, and I can’t deal with this facade. Maybe I’ll do the usual, push-ups in sets of 100 until my arms no longer work. Or run laps until I collapse. Whatever. I walk off, taking note of the curious sensation of how my feet no longer seemed attached to the rest of me. 

Just outside the room, I spy another interloper set apart from the gaiety. Aqua is finally up and moving, though weak from her stint in darkness. Her eyes are glazed and unfocused. There’s scratches on her shoulders, raw, red and in sets of threes. Done by herself, of course. I get that. The first thing you do after your return to life is to scrub yourself of the feeling of shadows. 

It’s all her fault though. She did this. It was her visit to the islands that gave me this power, and with it, the trauma. I was too young to understand it then, and even now I can’t find the words to describe how fucked up it all was. Back then, I didn’t question why I was treated as a man when I was just a boy. I just thought I was badass. But now I'm seventeen with blood on my hands and murder in my heart. Women make a habit of treating me as older than I am. 

I try not to make eye contact as I pass by, but Aqua grabs my arm. My muscles tense away instinctually, but she’s deceptively stronger than her current state suggests. She only manages to say my name. “Riku.” 

I meet her eyes. There’s a connection here, one I don’t want to have. Again, I’m too stupid to find the word. Our hearts full of dusty dignity. Our souls full of sinful sizzling depravity, while the children might as well be playing patty cake. Her closeness is intoxicating. She still smells like darkness, like things unspoken and mature. The raw scent drags the blood to the back of my skull, making static appear around the edges of my vision. She wears it well, though maybe it’s because she wears little else. My voice cracks. “Aqua- what-?” My mouth is dry. My tongue clicks. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

_ In my head I see another. She’s the one who found me in this alleyway cobbled with broken stones and lined with forgotten garbage. I try to walk away from the window. Briefly the thought occurs to me: I have no place to go. Even if I did, I have no way to get here. I decide to simply go away Where that is, is once again undefined, like many things in my life. _

_ The only definitive entity is her. The witch. Our eyes meet, and for a moment there’s a curtain of kindness over her heavily-shadowed eyes. I’m a child. I don’t understand. I try to walk away, to be the pussy I’d seen enacted in every other man in my life. But her hands stop me. _

_ My pubescent mind settles with the fact I belong here. Amongst the refuse. _

_ “Riku-.” _

The voice I hear changes in mid sentence. The boundaries between my thoughts and actions are beginning to blur. Aqua finishes her question like nothing is amiss. ”How long was I gone?”

The scene from my past vanishes completely and I find myself back in the winding hallway, Aqua’s fingers curled firmly around my bicep. Our eyes are still locked on one another, as we play the scene as if it were chess. Light and dark, shades of gray, whatever she wants. What little I have. Could this be paranoia? Or is there that much depth behind her eyes? I hissed through clenched teeth. “You’re safe now.”

“That’s not what I asked.” She doesn’t skip a beat “How long?”

“Ten years.” It would be a pretty lie, if not for the fact that everything that comes from my mouth is rotten. don’t know why I’m trying to coddle someone over ten years my senior. Especially after what she’s done. She’s weak. Thin. But alert. Which is more than I can say for myself after my own stint in darkness. 

“You’re lying.” She chides me softly. “It’s been twelve.”

“Yeah. I guess so.” 

She pulls away so quickly that her hair flicks in my eyes. She gazes into the distance, taking in the sounds of the party we are not allowed to attend. I think of the delicate cucumber sandwiches with their hardened crusts cut from their soft white centers, the pots of tea that had been hidden from the elements in order to remain delicate. It’s perfect. And the entrance fee would only be feigned innocence, the faked simplicity of seeing the world as either/or. But It seems Aqua and I are bankrupt. 

After a moment of staring at the goods she cannot have, she turns her sights to me. “Riku. You’re _ the _ Riku right? From all those years ago?” She reaches for me again, this time her hands cautiously hovering a few inches away from my face. I know this feeling. She’s afraid to find out if I’m a mirage. Alone in darkness, physical touch becomes a distant fantasy.

Our experiences feel as if we’re magnets on the same pole, and that’s the excuse that flashes in my head as I pull away at the same pace as which she reaches for me. My heels hit the wall. She touches me. Good god I haven’t been touched without violence in years. I hate it. I love it. She smells so good with fresh darkness rolling off of her skin. I close my eyes, breath in, and watch our dualities turn together.

I don’t want this. Not from _ her. _

_ She tilts her head. Curious at my lack of a reaction. I don’t think I’m without feeling. It’s just that everything's happening so fast it’s easier to not react at all. _

I put my hand over Aqua’s. There’s a fleeting moment where I realize my fingers are much stronger than hers. While I’d never call Aqua weak, I delight in the face that this time around, I’m bigger. I could win by strength alone. I try to push her hand away, but I only manage to hold our hands between us like we’re some kind of sweethearts. 

_ I’ve never held someone’s hand before. I’ve fantasized about it, about going as far as kissing, but most girls have no interest in me. And honestly the boys don’t either. But now there’s a grown woman with her hands on me, asking so sweetly for me to help her let down her hair. _

The flashback fades. “I don’t have time for this.” I clear my throat as soon as I hear the cracking in the first syllable. But what else would I be doing? Everything is safe. I have no purpose unless I’m being used. This is my commercial worth. The knight, the fodder, the—-

“Riku. Make me feel real.”

The fuck toy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Questions, aggressive comments or general curses of dishonor towards me/my family/my cow can be directed here:
> 
> https://yourscientistfriend.tumblr.com/


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys might want to start threading together the italics now. They make their own story ;)
> 
> Those codes have meanings. Google is your friend.

_ She doesn’t care about me. She knows that I’ll cling to the legs of anyone that says I have worth. I’m more than a mistake, more than my mother’s regret, more than my string of numbers after my name on the CPS papers. _

_ I remember sitting in the office of the island’s primary school, trying so hard to be still so that the metal folding chair wouldn’t rock beneath me. This place was much, much smaller than last school, but the stack of papers with my name on them were much, much taller. As the case worker and principal spoke, I committed the codes to memory: 995.51. F41.9. Z62.822. My personality reduced to a string of numbers.  _

_ What does it matter if we add T74.2 to the list? _

_ The witch touches my cheek. I don’t slap her away this time. This is normal, right? This is how people show affection. It must be. That’s why it feels good. _

_ “My darling boy. You know what you’re good for. Don’t disappoint me. Riku-“ _

“-make me feel real.”

Sex. Of course. This is reality. Everything is about sex, except sex itself. Sex is about power. It’s an interplay of those who are forced to submit and those who hold enough power to dominate. It’s a power play that I’ve learned from the best. In my Heart — Heart with a capital H —that signifies the Kingdom and the soul and all the bullshit iI’ve tried to hide— my Heart still hides the desire for control. 

Aqua shimmies closer to me. She still smells like something I could control. She smells like darkness, like things unspoken and mature. She’s everything my teenage soul could need and she’s close, so damn close to making me do something I don’t want. I don’t want this.  _ I don’t want this.  _ I repeat the phrase in my head, but my body reacts differently. I’m not sure which is the truth any longer. All I know is that her eyelashes are nearly intertwined in mine. The texture of her skin invites my fingertips. I’m taken for a moment by how human it is. Large pores, uneven textures, occasional strips of scar tissue — she hasn’t had time to care for herself. I wish I didn’t understand.

We hold hands in the hot and empty corridor. 

My fingers are twitching. I need to make something happen. I need to be in control for once in my miserable life. I try to center back on Aqua’s blue eyes, to focus on their heavy lids as she seeks out the darkest, filthiest being she can find. Her eyes, her hands — they focus on me. 

She grips my bicep. “Riku — is this real?” I lean in towards her grasp. The graze of her finger nails is so slight that I fantasize about a different reality, one where kind touches are the norm. But then she presses harder, and I submit more. 

_ This isn’t kind. This isn’t romantic.  _

I meet her gaze. I raise my head for a nod, but never make the follow through. The crowd and the tea party are just too damn loud. “I think so.”

**“** Then… can you make me feel real?” 

_I know what she wants. _I translate her words in my head. Fuck me and make me feel alive. It’s not really surprising when the definition of _alive_ blurs day by day. Nightmares? Heartless? Nobodies? Who are we after we’ve had our souls taken out and remodeled like putty? Among us, amongst the quasi-humans that had been to hell and came out scalded, there is only a sliding scale of possibilities. Maybe we’re alive. Maybe we aren’t. Maybe we’re the good guys. 

Maybe I’m the villain. 

Maybe that’s why I relish in the sound of my own refusal. The “no” I speak is breathy and fictitious. There's depravity, a sizzling sinfulness that floods my muscles as I push Aqua away, trying to make myself as imposing and unwelcoming as possible. I stand over her. I hiss every word through clenched teeth. “You’ve been in the darkness for a long time.” She doesn’t cower from the shadow I cast. Instead, her eyes are dewy as she looks up at me. Her lips are parted. Her mouth is so open and wet. I want to fill her with my finger tips. “I’m going to take you to bed. You’re going to go to sleep, and I’m going to go—“ To where? To what? The party is in full swing without me. I’m stuck in this tower, in the midst of my own cloudy thoughts. “-go take a shower.” My tone falters. I’m so lame. Still such a fucking pussy. 

She hooks her arm around my elbow. I tense. “Fine. Take me.” She leads us to our destination via the twisting featureless corridors that I swear change every time I blink. Her room is like mine — sparse but chaotic, and dizzyingly well-lit. It passes my mind that our rooms are the only one with the flood lights. This was on purpose. They don’t trust us. Maybe they’re right not to. As we wade through ripped shirts and twisted sheets, the fuzz in my head intensifies. The darkness that rolls off her skin makes me want - ah fuck I don’t know — her? Her body? To see something else besides my mistakes painted behind my eyes? I try to tell myself this doesn’t matter. My only goal is to help her to bed like I’d done for my mother after her long Thursday nights at the bar. I try not to feel anything, try not to smile as I wrench her arm away from mine, pushing her down by her shoulders until she falls back into a sitting position on her bed. She isn’t fighting me. Why isn’t she fighting me? She’s more capable a fighter than anyone in this tower. 

Please, someone fucking fight me. 

Aqua scrambles to sit. “Why are you doing this?” She balls her fists against the blankets. When she glares up at me, I can see myself reflected in the fire behind her eyes.“You've been down there! You of all people should get it.” 

“Get  _ what _ ?” I snap, then catch myself. No. I’m not going to do this. I push my frustration out with my breath. I try to ground myself like I did before. I end up looking at my shoes again. The dirt on the toe of my boots are obscured by one of Aqua’s discarded bras. 

Aqua slams her palms down. The mattress squeaks. It’s going to be a loud night. “You of all people should know what it's like to, to-.” 

“To be what? The toy in someone else’s game? Of course I fucking get it.  _ You _ made me _ a  _ toy!” Fuck it feels good to yell, feels better to yell at her. “You did this!” I’m shaking. I can’t help it. I want her darkness but can’t fathom her touching me. I want release but I don’t want it from her. My arms don’t belong to me as I sling them out toward the disheveled room. I’m not sure who I’m talking to, but it’s not Aqua. Her role was a small one. That’s the worst part of it all, none of this matters. We’re inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. The colorful illusions of magic that hides the endless purgatory of gloomy cityscapes, the rust that plays hide-and-seek with the star dust, the jungles that hold their dark and unyielding mysteries-- they’re my secrets to keep. Every scrap of pain I’ve ever endured will never amount to anything. 

I've never mattered. 

She doesn’t raise her voice to match mine. She doesn’t legitimize my anger all. “-what it's like to be alone.” She finishes her sentence despite my outburst. She strings her words together for more impact. “I thought you’d understand what it was like to be alone.”

_In the end, I’m alone_. _I’m_ _always_ _alone_. The anger I had been using to support me gives way, and the trap door opens. I fall into the emptiness where my soul used to be. _Alone_. My skin feels transparent. Aqua can see my broken brain and the missing pieces of my soul. Abandonment issues. Trust issues. _The worst part of looking for stability is sometimes you find it in dark alleyways and sometimes it leads you into a villain’s bed. There are hands on me, heavy and commanding. _I have to sit down. _The bed groans. A hand touches my cheek_. I slap it away, but I don’t know why. I don’t want to be alone. I want to be touched. I crave claws in my ribs, gripping my heart. Painful. Wonderful. Realities merge. The slap connects. Aqua gasps. I clamor for an excuse, but nothing comes. I guess my muscle memory works faster than my brain.

A look of concern crosses Aqua’s face as she quietly folds her hands in her lap. That should have hurt her. Why can’t I hurt her? Am I that weak? I’m so tired of not having a say in anything. She stutters out an apology. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”

“No.” My voice is deep. Something doesn’t sound right. I have to clear my throat. I’m a man. Why don’t I feel like it? I feel constricted, like that child in an alleyway. “You shouldn’t have.”

“You can always leave.” She nods towards the door, towards the the expansive hallway that leads to nowhere. “-go back to the party.”

“You know I can’t do that.” It’s not a no. It’s not a yes either. I don’t belong in there so it’s easy to think that maybe I’m meant to be here, on this bed with a blank stare into space. I know what’s going to happen. I knew it then and I know it now. If I don’t want to be alone, then this is what I must do

“You’ll stay here then?“ She touches my face again. I fucking hate that feeling, but I don’t give her the satisfaction of a readable expression. Would it matter anyways? This isn’t Aqua, this is darkness, and darkness takes what it wants without asking. “Riku, I-,“ She never finishes her sentence. She grabs my face with both hands, pulling my head back until she gains access for a kiss. I receive it with my eyes clamp shut. It’s not kind. It’s not romantic. I yield further back on my elbows as she presses her warm body into me. The scent of dusk is harder to ignore her heart pressed to the base of my throat. 

_ I kiss my youth goodbye. I’m exhausted. I beg for my brain to shut off. I hear the laughs in my head. That joke from earlier? I think I get it now. I’m the punchline. _

My veins burn. My head is so cloudy that I can’t gain traction of my thoughts. Aqua pulls away from me. She looks for a reaction. I say nothing, but simply take in the way her eyes glimmer golden in the harsh light. I feel it all again — the swirling void of dark warmth, the womb that offers protection from this feverish reality, the dampened morals that once told me it’s okay to kill two children if it manages to save one hero. Tonight will be messy. 

She’s already decided and I just can’t say no. This is my commercial worth. 

_ My worth is not who I am, because what I am is rotten. My worth is what I can do. For Kairi, Sora, for the Witch I chose to serve.  _

“Riku, are you okay with this? I am a lot older than you.”

Hm. I’ve never had someone ask before they involve my body in their terrible decisions. For a moment, I realize this could have went the other way. In another world, in another place, meeting Xion or Namine at the wrong time — well, I was the villain for a reason wasn’t I? I'm predisposed to this kind of behavior. It was in those numbers in the pile of papers at a school. I’ve always been rotten. “I’m fine. I’ve..uh.. been with an older woman before.”

Aqua stares at me for a beat longer than normal. I hate the scrutiny. Is she disgusted? I know I am. She tries to shift away but I pull her back. I don't know how to be gentle. I’m all fingernails and calluses as I wrap my arms around her. I may not be capable of love but I’m capable of being fucked, and that seems to be the only band aid our tainted souls deserve. She takes my acceptance as consent, and she kisses me again. She’s harder this time— a real yes ma’am kind of kiss. I let her touch me. I yield to the hands in my hair, nails down my shoulders, the bites to my lips as if I’m her last meal on death row. I take the darkness into my mouth again.  _ Purple and green smoke roll off of her pale skin, filling me until I can’t breathe. I’m so engorged, dripping liquid slide out of my mouth and ears and eyes. I didn’t want to be this dark. I just didn’t want to be alone.  _

She moves to my lap, tucking her long legs on either side of my hips. I’m bombarded by that rich oily scent that stains her skin. _ Darkness _ — pure, caustic and sweet. It ignites memories of when I didn’t have to think, when I had a purpose that I could walk towards automatically, when I knew my place.  _ Please. Keep me at heel. Show me stability.  _ I need that acid on her skin to dissolve me down to shattered bones, to let me forget that I’m supposed to be the good guy. 

“ _ Touch me.” _

Oh yeah. I forgot that was an option. The pendulum in my head swings from _hate _to _need _and back again so quickly that my stomach churns. No. Fuck it. I’m not doing this roller coaster ride. I’ll make myself enjoy it. I can brainwash myself. I’ve done it before. I timidly place my hands on the curve of her thighs. Where she straddles me I can feel the indentation of her muscles. She could kill me, easily. She almost did earlier. Her experience outweighs mine. But she’s much, _much_ worse for wear — I could kill her with strength and size.

Shit. My brain must be broken. That idea makes me hot. I bet Sora doesn’t think of death when Kairi’s — fuck. I need to stop thinking about Sora when I have a boner. 

We aren’t the same. We never will be. I’m not cut out for the whole hero work. 

It would be easier to enjoy this if that lamp wasn’t blinding me. It makes a halo around Aqua’s messy hair as she works her mouth down my throat and chest. 

It’s so fucking magical to see the golden glint in her eyes as she looks up at me, her mouth open and wet, her face shadowed. We’re a shared fever begging to break. “Ah, Riku, do me a favor.” She shifts to sitting on my hips again. 

My body starts to twitch. “Isn’t that what I’m doing now?” 

“No, I -“ She digs her fingers in, hitting the tender spot in my forearm that never quite healed. “I want you to hurt me.”


	3. Chapter 3

Pain, huh?

Flash. This overriding sense of heat as she twists into my arm. The left one — the one that spiky-headed fucker shattered. It throbs. I huff like an angry bull. It’s been over a year ago — why am I still so weak? I can almost feel the bruises reform, see the black and blue in the fluorescent lamp. I'm getting real tired of the light forcing me to look at what I’ve done.

I look into Aqua’s lust-filled eyes. She’s not forced a single action onto me, and yet, I can still confidently say this is her fault. She did this — not the breaking of bone, but the striking of a dark haze. I feel older. My hair is longer. There’s sand under my feet, and the sun is in my eyes. I am full, so full of what should have been something great. 

I am not great. I did not survive the trauma she inflicted on me. Seventeen, fourteen, six-- those versions of me are gone -- and I did not come back like a phoenix. I did not become kinder. I did not become gentler. Instead, I have flashbacks at the sight of children’s tea parties, because I will never be as perfect, crystalline and palatable as sugar cubes. I’m the bad guy, the closest thing to hell she could imagine for a quick fuck. 

And suddenly beating the shit out of her doesn’t seem half bad. 

I want to hurt. Not her exactly, but I need pain in order to make sense to all of this. I deserve to tell my story. So I tell it the only way I know how. I follow her orders. I lose myself in the mechanical actions. I slap her hard with the back of my hand. I have no idea what sound she makes. I don’t know the difference between pleasure and pain. It’s some kind of hard pop. A cry, a tetanus-like arch of vertebrae. My mouth drops. I shouldn’t have — why did I?

“Do it again?” Aqua draws out into a whimper, some sort of pathetic sound my ears should have never been privy to — wouldn’t have been privy to if I hadn’t been conveniently placed in that alleyway. I don’t even think it’s really me she’s kissing. She’s grabbing for someone much taller, much older. I really should have expected that. She’s using me, of course. She wants something, something I don’t have. I’m second guessing my every move, my every thought, every weird scarred and tattered inch of my skin. _ She reaches for my shirt. _ I tense my abs. I still have baby fat -- I mean, I’m seventeen, I shouldn’t still-. Ah, I’m so inadequate. The air is cold. Her body is warm. It’s so fucking bright that my head is pounding. The curve of her cheekbone fits perfectly into the dip of my sternum. I watch as she drags her teeth along my chest, rakes her nails along my arms. I pray for blood, but none ever comes. How am I supposed to know I’m human if I can’t see blood? _ What am I supposed to do?_

I’m losing my mind. I whisper a slight “_No”,_ but both of us know I never really mean that word. My head is spinning. She thinks I’m being a tease. Maybe I am. I’m not her only lover, but maybe I can be her best. Maybe I’ll just draw this out nice and long until she’s panting, saying it’s me that she needs. God, wouldn’t that be something. Someone who actually needs _me_. I, fuck, — that word again. The word I mutter too often under my breath. The word I’m not allowed to say. Fuck. _Fuck_ _me_. I’ve never felt sexier. I am sex, pure and objectified. I'm a dog, I can smell her heat. Can she smell me? Does she smell the desperation?

The confusion?

All I know is that I’ve got to turn that fucking lamp off. I try to push Aqua away, but she stops me with a light touch to my arm. She looks up at me -- really looks _ at me _ \-- her wide eyes wild and needy, her cheek starting to show the shape of my knuckles, outlined in blues and purples. There’s a throbbing in my shorts — I’ve marked her. I want to do more. I’m scared of doing more. It’s the violence that does it for me, it’s always this fucking aggression. I’m rotten to the core — deserving of those numbers on my caseworker’s desk, deserving of being left like garbage in an alleyway. _ I realize I’m too far into this covenant to back out now. I can’t say no when someone actually wants me. I lock my jaw. I want to put my head through this wall, let rubble and dust explode while my head goes black. I want to roll over and let her set her dragon-claws into my chest. _

_I was never meant to be the good guy_

There’s something wrong with me, something not programmed right. I hate every bit of this. I can’t stand these actions lit so brightly for the world to see. I reach over Aqua’s head and fumble for the lamp’s cord. In one swift motion, I yank the entire thing from its socket. It shatters against the ground. A small spark sizzles through the heated air, and then, nothing. 

It’s quiet. Ungodly so without the annoying electric hum. In the moments that it takes for my eyes to adjust, I’m left with only touch and sound to guide me. The coils of the mattress squeak. Her breathing is soft in the heated air. There’s fluttering in my gut, as if I’ve swallowed birds. My name is on her tongue. Her hands are on my face—

I slap her again. Hard. “Stop touching my face.”

Anger. Not sex. Are they even different any more? Have they ever been different? There’s something wrong with the both of us — how she gasps, how I get harder. I don’t know what else to do. Tenderness isn’t in my skill set. I only know abuse. But she likes it. _ She likes it, I like it too. _What the fuck is wrong with me? My hands are incorporeal, yet they still manage to capture fistfuls of blue hair. Blue like the ocean. Blue like the sky. Blue like things natural and pure. I defile it. I pull her head back and whisper into the throbbing arteries of her neck. “Take off your clothes.”

She does, and fucking hell, the _ shape _of her. Breasts held high by the her prominent rib cage, thigh muscles straining against the skin like she’s full of so much life that she’s going to burst. I go to my knees. I don’t know if that’s what I’m supposed to be doing, but it feels right. It must feel right to her too because she spreads her legs for me. The wooden floor is hard against bone. The knobs of my spine try to punch through the skin of my bare back as I arch over her. Her lips are slightly apart and gleaming inside where everything is softer, pinker. My arms go around her waist and I try to engulf her entire body into my mouth. 

I taste her noises. Feel her writhe. I strain to reach every corner of her. Her hands lock on my head, keeping me at heel. I just want to consume her -- in ways that I shouldn’t be thinking of during sex. I need ton feel flesh yield and split, filling me with hot, hot blood. The voice telling me to just fucking shred her to pieces is much, much louder with the light off. There’s some small bit of me that says to stop the madness, but the much louder part of me wants to try to dig my way into her soul. 

I want to make her cum. For my sake, not for hers. I don’t care if she likes this — wait, what the hell am I saying? I-I just want to hear something, know I caused her undoing. Her legs are around my head, I think she’d like to crush my skull. What’s worse, is that I’d like that. To die here, where I don’t have to think, where I’m not in solitary confinement. No jealousy, nothing to prove, just my fingers inside of her curling them upward from the inside out while she yanks my hair with all her might. 

She pulls harder. She’s stopping me. I don’t want to stop. I try to lap up more of her, but when she reaches down to take my face in her hands, I collapse into myself. I become small, submissive as she pulls me up to kiss her. My face burns in her proximity, like she’s this great ball of light and she needs to give it to someone. I absorb it. Bathe in it. Hate it. Let it wash over me like waves meeting the shore. There’s a comfort in that imagery. Something deep down, I can’t remember. Natural, as I think of wetness, of water, of her dripping through my fingers. I don’t know what my hands should do. I only remember articles in porn magazines and bits of Vanitas bragging about what he’d done to a less-than-willing Xion. I’ve only learned the violence of this whole act. I don’t know what to do with this kindness. _ Please, I want to go back to hurting each other. I can make sense of that._ “There’s condoms on the bedside table. Get one.”

I want to question who they are for. Why does she have them, how does she have them here? I must be moving too slowly because she smirks at me fumbling with the foil wrapper. “Sorry, I’m bad at this”

She takes it from me, her motions weirdly clinical considering how feral everything else has been. She rolls it up my dick. “I thought you’d been with an older woman before?”

“Can we not talk about that?” Can we not talk about _ her _? Her with the swirling dark hair, her with the uncanny ageless skin. I don’t want to be reminded of her long bony fingers against my lips, her offering of affection in exchange for prices I could never pay. Her whose name I refuse to say. The other older woman in a series of older women who have cheapened me into the state I am now.

I am so fucking hard that it hurts. 

Aqua quietly removes her hands. “We don't have to-“

“Shut up.” We aren’t talking about this. I refuse to talk about it. I want to go back to where we were before, feral and blood and bone. I grab the back of her head, kiss her so hard that neither of us can breathe. I will control the ending this time. 

But I don’t. I can’t. I’ve never been in control. She led me here. She had the condom. She set this all in motion over a decade ago. It’s not my agency that allows me in between her legs. Not my choice to enter her so roughly. I think I would have liked to be gentle, but what we share is pain. 

I am surrounded by pain. My left shoulder dips, the corresponding arm too weak to hold the weight. _ She maims me _ . Aqua bites at my shoulder, hissing from inside her throat like a feral cat. She bucks her hips to bring me in deeper. _ She ruins me. _ Her nails are massacring the skin of my back, and yet I arch into it. I need her to rip it out of me. My heart, my light, my darkness — just tear me to shreds. _ She breaks me down. She builds me up. _

_ She lets me fall _.

And for a moment, there is light. Not pleasurable and warm, but garish like the lamp that now lies broken on the floor. My thighs tense. I close my eyes, and in the center of the light, I see _ her _ . Her stern expression taunting me in this moment of weakness. _ She was right, as always, I was and still am a terrible, rotten boy who will never be able to turn down the darkness. I’m a disappointment as always, but I am her disappointment. A badly behaved pet that can’t follow simple instructions. But I’m hers. _

_ Her naughty, terribly disappointing boy_

The image fades. Reality hits hard. I collapse in on myself, my guts tangling and pulsing. The light in my head denotes, and there goes my muscles, my cock, and I’m twitching, twitching and coming in some type of lovely little catastrophe. My hands are on the sheets. I’m crushing Aqua with the weight of my body. My hair is stuck to my forehead with sweat. When I open my eyes, I see blue. Aqua smiles at me, her cheeks flushed with adrenaline. She rakes my hair back with her nails. “You okay?”

Oh fuck oh fuck what have I done?

I jerk upright. Some cum trails out of the condom. Oh god, I’ve fucked something up. Aqua ties a messy knot in the latex and the used condom ends up on the floor as neither of us are okay enough to make it to the garbage can. I’m naked and dirty, with my back against the wall, my head skyward, panting so hard that my ribs ache. The cold wall does nothing for the wounds on my back. 

“Hey — you okay?” It takes Aqua several seconds to speaks, and even then her words sound breathy. 

I gulp for air, try to make the come-down happen quicker. My dick’s already soft but my head is about to burst. “Yeah, I’m just-“ Just what? Terrified of myself? Fucking blissed out? I can’t find a singular word to describe sex where I would have easily let myself be killed and yet would have as just as easily killed her. I feel close to death. I feel close to life. I let myself be smothered in darkness, so mostly I feel ashamed. “It was just really intense.”

Aqua gives a little laugh. “Yeah. You’re more experienced than I took you for.”

“Nah.” I try to dodge the subject. I make a show of looking at the clock, only to find this farce has eaten away a mere hour of time. I allowed myself to be taken apart, used for a hit of darkness, discarded like a cigarette, and all that passed was a fucking hour? What was the point? It must fill some spot inside my heart because I keep letting it happen. Mouths together, orifices full of drool and teeth and muscle. If it hadn’t of been with Aqua, it might have been Axel. Kairi. Fuck, I don’t know, Leon. It’s what I’m good for. “Do you wanna go back to the party? There’s still time.”

“No. I don’t really belong there. You know what that’s like, right?”

I don’t meet her eyes, though I feel her stare. Despite how close we are on the bed, despite how close we’ve been with my tongue inside of her, with her fingers piercing my skin —I’m still so fucking lonley. She’s in bed next to me, but I’m missing something, something which has no name. The weight of the behemoth presses into me again. All that remains is just a painful absence. I look towards the mess in the room. The broken glass. The used condom. The clothes that are too low of a priority to be touched. “I think I get it.” I say. I belong here.


	4. Bonus: Memory in Italics

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was asked to copy/paste Riku's memories here for accessibility's sake, since the blocks of italics were hard to decipher for some readers.

_Hands. Hers are thin, bony, somehow dainty and commanding at the same time. The darkness her long fingers command is intoxicating. Those hands make their way to my shoulders. They grip my arm. _

_Then, her voice hits hot and raspy If I think on it long enough, I can feel the humidity of her breath on the shell of my ear. “They don’t care.” She whispers. “They’ve never cared.”_

_There’s no argument I can make. Whatever noun I place in that sentence — Sora, Kairi, Mom, Dad — they’ve all left me. In one way or another, the fact remains. The witch is right. I am alone. No one cares. _

_Who do I have to trust?_

_She’s the one that found me in this alleyway cobbled with broken stones and lined with forgotten garbage. I try to walk away from the window. Briefly the thought occurs to me: I have no place to go. Even if I did, I have no way to get here. I decide to simply go away. Where that is, is once again undefined, like many things in my life._

_The only definitive entity is her. The witch. Our eyes meet, and for a moment there’s a curtain of kindness over her heavily-shadowed eyes. I’m a child. I don’t understand. I try to walk away, to be the pussy I’d seen enacted in every other man in my life. But her hands stop me._

_My pubescent mind settles with the fact I belong here. Amongst the refuse._

_“Riku-.”_

_She tilts her head. Curious at my lack of a reaction. I don’t think I’m without feeling. It’s just that everything's happening so fast it’s easier to not react at all. I’ve never held someone’s hand before. I’ve fantasized about it, about going as far as kissing, but most girls have no interest in me. And honestly the boys don’t either. But now there’s a grown woman with her hands on me, asking so sweetly for me to help her let down her hair. _

_She doesn’t care about me. She knows that I’ll cling to the legs of anyone that says I have worth. I’m more than a mistake, more than my mother’s regret, more than my string of numbers after my name on the CPS papers. I remember sitting in the office of the island’s primary school, trying so hard to be still so that the metal folding chair wouldn’t rock beneath me. This place was much, much smaller than my last school, but the stack of papers with my name on them were much, much taller. As the case worker and principal spoke, I committed the codes to memory: 995.51. F41.9. Z62.822. My personality reduced to a string of numbers. _

_What does it matter if we add T74.2 to the list?_

_The witch touches my cheek. I don’t slap her away this time. This is normal, right? This is how people show affection. It must be. That’s why it feels good._

_“My darling boy. You know what you’re good for. Don’t disappoint me. Riku-“_

_I don’t want this. This isn’t kind. This isn’t romantic. I know what she wants. _

_In the end, I’m alone. I’m always alone. The worst part of looking for stability is sometimes you find it in dark alleyways and sometimes it leads you into a villain’s bed. There are hands on me, heavy and commanding. I have to sit down. The bed groans. A hand touches my cheek. I kiss my youth goodbye. I’m exhausted. I beg for my brain to shut off. I hear the laughs in my head. That joke from earlier? I think I get it now. I’m the punchline._

_My worth is not who I am, because what I am is rotten. My worth is what I can do. For Kairi, Sora, for the Witch I chose to serve._

_Purple and green smoke roll off of her pale skin, filling me until I can’t breathe. I’m so engorged, dripping liquid out of my mouth and ears and eyes. I didn’t want to be this dark. I just didn’t want to be alone._

_Darkness Please. Keep me at heel. Show me stability. Touch me. Fuck me. _

_She reaches for my shirt. What am I supposed to do? I realize I’m too far into this covenant to back out now. I can’t say no when someone actually wants me. I lock my jaw. I want to put my head through this wall, let rubble and dust explode while my head goes black.I want to roll over and let her set her dragon-claws into my chest. _

_ I was never meant to be the good guy_

_Pease, I want to go back to hurting each other. I can make sense of that_

_She likes it, I like it too. She maims me . She ruins me. She breaks me down. She builds me up. She lets me fall. She was right, as always, I was and still am a terrible, rotten boy who will never be able to turn down the darkness. I’m a disappointment as always, but I am her disappointment. A badly behaved pet that can’t follow simple instructions. But I’m hers. _

_Her naughty, terribly disappointing boy._

**Author's Note:**

> Questions, aggressive comments or general curses of dishonor towards me/my family/my cow can be directed here:
> 
> https://yourscientistfriend.tumblr.com/


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